Engineering and manufacturing industries

A new meta-xylene process goes commercial

Article Abstract:

Sulzer Chemtech has developed a process for recovering meta-xylenes from mixed xylenes, which uses a combination of distillation and melt crystallization. The novel method uses a stream of mixed xylenes with a 60 to 70% meta content, such as raffinate from a para-xylene plant, which is first distilled to eliminate the ethylbenzene content. The mixed xylene stream is distilled further to remove light hydrocarbons and ortho-xylene, increasing the meta-xylene content of the stream to about 95 wt%.

Heavy oil process can cut costs by up to 70%

Article Abstract:

Synergy Technologies has developed a new process for upgrading crude oils with 7 to 15 API gravity to 30-plus API gravity using a 1/2-bbl/d pilot unit. Its CPJ process exposes preheated heavy oil to steam for a few milliseconds in the reactor, which cracks the large molecules cleanly, with minimal gas production and carbon formation of coking and hydrocracking. Synergy says the CPI process is 70% cheaper than existing coker-hydrocracking methods since it does not use hydrogen or high pressure.